Since Chuck missed out of the last math "puzzle," I figured I'd start a thread of them.

Here are the rules.

1. The person who answered the last puzzle HAS to ask the next one. If you don't want to play, then don't reply.2. Show your work.3. Please try to keep math out of high level topics (this is mainly directed toward me). Comp Sci and Math problems are both acceptable.4. The current question must be answered and validated before moving o to the next one.

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Someone showed me this problem on Tuesday. Aside from an answer, I'd be interested in how you figure out the problem.

This was from my 'revolt of the lab rats' series and it was sent in interestingly enough by a fellow named Andrew Magliozzi, who happens to be my son! I thought the name looked familiar. (Web lackey note: Andrew insisted that we shamelessly promote his commercial enterprise, Veritas Tutors, in exchange for this mediocre brain teaser. Though it sounds sleazy to us, he is the boss' son, so we do what we're told.)

Imagine this: It's the eve of the annual Car Talk 'We Haven't Been Canceled Yet' Banquet. John 'Bugsy' Lawlor has procured the food and the wine for the following evening's gala, and he's extremely pleased with himself because he knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy, and he's obtained for $50, thirteen one-half gallon jugs of the finest red wine. He's very excited about the following evening's festivities until Doug 'Punkin Lips' Berman informs him that he received a note suggesting that one of those 13 bottles of wine contains a deadly poison. In fact, it's one that kills within 24 hours. 'Is someone out to get us? Who could be out to get us? Why? Why not? But why the whole staff?'

Anyway, because they're hopeless cheapskates and unwilling to discard 12 bottles of perfectly good cheap wine, they head off to MIT to consult with a scientist friend of theirs. 'So let's see,' he says, 'you have these thirteen bottles of wine and one of them contains a poison that will prove fatal within 24 hours after it's been consumed. And the Car Talk Extravaganza is when?'

'Tomorrow night.'

The scientist goes on to suggest that from his knowledge of poisons, even the smallest sample is usually enough to cause certain death, even if mixed and diluted with the wine from the untainted bottles. 'Hmm,' he says, 'I'll be right back.'

In a flash, he returns with four small cages, each one containing your standard lab rat. What a moral dilemma, they think, we have to sacrifice lab rats to save Car Talk? 'But wait, wait,' they say. 'We have 13 bottles of wine. How are we supposed to save the entire Car Talk staff and empire, with just 4 rats?'

'You can do it,' he says and then disappears into the inky shadows.

So, you have 4 rats in little cages, 13 bottles of wine and one of them has got poison in it. Now you can obviously take samples from any of the bottles and you can give as much or as little as you want to any of the rats. And don't forget, you're not going to know if the poison is fatal until the night of the banquet because it takes 24 hours to kill human or rat. So, how do you do it?

Timko wrote:Since Chuck missed out of the last math "puzzle," I figured I'd start a thread of them.

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Someone showed me this problem on Tuesday. Aside from an answer, I'd be interested in how you figure out the problem.

At a party, there are 12 bottles of wine. However, 1 of these bottles is poisoned. Luckily, you have 4 rats to help you determine which bottle of wine was poisoned. How would you determine the poisoned bottle?

I'm totally missing the point of this one. Can you only feed each rat wine one time? Why not just test the bottles until one of them kills one rat? What are the other three rats for?